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The union representing Hollywood actors has recommended strike action after a midnight negotiation deadline passed with no agreement. The industry is bracing for the possibility of the first simultaneous strike by Hollywood writers and actors in more than 60 years.
In a statement, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra), the union that represents 160,000 actors, said its negotiating committee had voted unanimously to recommend a strike. The national board will decide this morning.
It said: “After more than four weeks of bargaining, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) – the entity that represents major studios and streamers, including Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros. Discovery – remains unwilling to offer a fair deal on the key issues that are essential to Sag-Aftra members.”
The statement said: “The companies have refused to meaningfully engage on some topics and on others completely stonewalled us. Until they do negotiate in good faith, we cannot begin to reach a deal. We have no choice but to move forward in unity, and on behalf of our membership, with a strike recommendation to our national board. The board will discuss the issue this morning and will make its decision.”
What impact would the strike have? A strike is expected to have an immediate impact on publicity efforts for the summer’s top films; this evening’s premiere of Oppenheimer in London has been moved to start an hour earlier so the cast can attend regardless of the outcome. Other major commercial films, including Barbie and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, have already hosted their world premieres, though their stars will be restricted from participating in further promotional events. The strike might also delay the Emmy awards until late autumn, or even next year, industry publications reported.
Russian spy chief confirms call to CIA director after Wagner revolt
Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, has said that he and his CIA counterpart discussed the short-lived mutiny by the Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and “what to do with Ukraine” in a phone call late last month.
Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, told Russia’s Tass new agency yesterday that Bill Burns had raised “the events of June 24” – when fighters from the Wagner mercenary group took control of a southern Russian city and advanced towards Moscow before reaching a deal with the Kremlin to end the revolt.
But he said that for most of the call, lasting about an hour, “we considered and discussed what to do with Ukraine”.
The CIA declined to comment on his remarks.
The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported on 30 June that William Burns had called Naryshkin to assure the Kremlin that the United States had no role in the Wagner revolt.
What has Ukraine said? Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February 2022, says other countries should not negotiate its future on its behalf, and the US has repeatedly backed this principle, which it describes as “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”.
Are Burns and Naryshkin talking regularly? The pair have maintained a line of communication since the start of the Ukraine war, at a time when other direct contacts between Moscow and Washington are at a minimum, with relations at their lowest point since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
House Republicans grill FBI director as Democrats deride attacks on agency
House Republicans grilled the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray, at a frequently contentious committee hearing yesterday. While Republicans accused the FBI of political bias in its handling of investigations into Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, Democrats derided the attacks on the bureau as a smokescreen driven by conspiracy theories.
The Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, Jim Jordan of Ohio, kicked off the hearing with a litany of complaints about the FBI’s alleged targeting of rightwing leaders and activists, lamenting the supposed “double standard that exists now in our justice system”. Jordan suggested that the allegedly misguided leadership of Wray, a Trump appointee, could jeopardize government funding for the FBI’s planned new headquarters.
“I hope [Democrats] will work with us in the appropriations process to stop the weaponization of the government against the American people,” Jordan said in his opening statement.
The top Democrat on the committee, Jerry Nadler of New York, countered Jordan’s allegations by accusing Republicans of acting as Trump’s attack dog at the expense of Americans’ safety. Last month, Trump was indicted on 37 federal counts, including 31 violations of the Espionage Act, over allegations that he intentionally withheld classified documents from federal authorities.
What did Nadler say? “Republicans may want to downplay Trump’s behavior and blame the FBI for his downfall. But no matter what they say, Trump risked the safety and security of the United States to remove those documents from the White House, then lied to the government instead of returning them,” Nadler said. “Donald Trump must be held accountable, and attempts to shield him from the consequences of his own actions are both transparent and despicable.”
In other news …
The former chaplain of a Roman Catholic high school in Louisiana has pleaded guilty to molesting two minors whom he met through his work, and was given a five-year prison sentence. Patrick Wattigny’s plea and sentence came after both of his victims strongly advocated for a harsher punishment.
Fox News was hit with a defamation lawsuit by the Trump supporter Ray Epps after its former host Tucker Carlson repeatedly called Epps an undercover FBI agent who orchestrated the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Carlson said Epps “helped stage-manage the insurrection” – a conspiracy he broadcast in nearly 20 episodes.
The leader of Thailand’s most popular party has warned of a high cost if he is blocked from taking power, after he was dealt a series of blows on the eve of a parliamentary vote to decide the next prime minister. Pita Limjaroenrat, of Thailand’s Move Forward, is facing an uphill battle due to election rules.
Tornadoes and thunderstorms battered the Chicago area yesterday, forcing airports to halt air traffic and prompting officials to advise residents to seek shelter as tornado sirens echoed through the third largest US city. At least eight tornadoes hit north-eastern Illinois, with no immediate reports of injuries.
Stat of the day: Twitter owes ex-employees $500m in severance, lawsuit claims
Twitter allegedly refused to pay at least $500m in promised severance to thousands of employees who were laid off after Elon Musk acquired the company, a lawsuit filed on Wednesday claims. Courtney McMillian, who oversaw Twitter’s employee benefits programs as its “head of total rewards” before she was laid off in January, filed the proposed class action in San Francisco federal court. McMillian claims that under a severance plan created by Twitter in 2019, most workers were promised two months of their base pay plus one week of pay for each full year of service if they were laid off. Senior employees, such as McMillian, were owed six months of base pay, according to the lawsuit. But Twitter only gave laid-off workers one month of severance pay at most, and many did not receive anything, McMillian claims.
Don’t miss this: How one of Canada’s ‘oldest unsolved and most unique’ cases was cracked
For nearly five decades, little was known about the woman whose body was pulled from the Nation River, 90 miles west of Montreal, on 3 May 1975. She was white, with shoulder-length brown hair recently dyed strawberry blond and well-manicured nails. But she had no identification nor any clear identifying features. Over time, the woman – known simply as the Nation River Lady – became “one of the oldest unsolved and most unique” cases the local police force had ever dealt with, stumping successive generations of investigators.
Last week, after 47 years, Ontario provincial police announced that the Nation River Lady had been identified as Jewell Parchman Langford, a prominent businessperson from Jackson, Tennessee, in a breakthrough marking one of the first times investigative genetic genealogy has been used in Canada. Police said they had charged Rodney Nichols, 81, with murder in connection to the case. Nichols, who lives in Florida, is now the subject of an extradition request.
Climate check: World’s oceans changing colour due to climate breakdown, study suggests
Earth’s oceans are changing colour and climate breakdown is probably to blame, according to research. The deep blue sea is actually becoming steadily greener over time, according to the study, with areas in the low latitudes near the equator especially affected. “The reason we care about this is not because we care about the colour, but because the colour is a reflection of the changes in the state of the ecosystem,” said BB Cael, a scientist at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton and author of the study published in Nature. When comparing changes in colour with those hypothesised from a computer model simulating what the oceans would look like if human-caused global heating had never taken place, the change was clear. The changes have been detected over 56% of the world’s oceans – an area greater than all of the land on Earth.
Last Thing: An ‘aggressive’ sea otter is snatching surfers’ boards. Experts are puzzled
A California otter is making headlines for her unique, and worrying, interactions with surfers. In recent weeks, Mark Woodward, a photographer who goes by Native Santa Cruz on Twitter and Instagram has been sharing photos and videos of southern sea otters riding on surfboards they’ve commandeered. Authorities are particularly concerned about one sea otter, known as 841, who was involved in multiple incidents and can be seen in a video relentlessly gnawing on a board that the aquatic mammal scared a rider off of. While the videos and photos have elicited jokes about the otter reclaiming her watery home, Woodward and the US Fish and Wildlife Service warn that its behavior is highly unusual and puts people and the animals in danger. Wildlife authorities and experts still don’t have a clear explanation of the five-year-old otter’s behavior, but say they are working to find, capture and relocate her.
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